Saturday, January 4, 2014

New Journey, New Blog, How We Got here

I had to change over to a new email account and I couldn't figure out how to connect it with my old blog- too techno savvy for me. So I figured, new blog to go along with our new journey. Hopefully, I'll do a much better job at posting. :)

The past few months have been a new journey and it now has a new destination: adoption!! We told our families at Thanksgiving and Christmas and then officially told everyone via FB on January 1. I told D that I may never get to have a "pregnancy announcement" so I wanted to be creative with it and enjoy the moment. Below is our picture from the fabulous Anna Pitts at Purple Paisley Photography

I want this blog to document our journey to becoming parents, to write what I'm learning about adoption and to keep our friends and families updated on the journey. Here's the Reader's Digest version of how we got here.

Before D and I were engaged, we talked about adoption and knew that it was something that would be a part of our family. We just thought it would be after we had biological children. We knew that getting pregnant could be difficult due to my previous history of endometreosis. Plus, we got married later in life by "Southern standards"- I was 31, he was 32. After about six months of marriage and no pregnancy (and a few other issues that made me think there was a problem), I underwent surgery in February 2013. No endo but a lot of scar tissue and other things that made the doctor feel like pregnancy wasn't going to be impossible but hard. She immediately prescribed Clomid and referred me to a specialist. In April, I saw the specialist who was amazing and didn't seem to think things were bad as originally thought. He wanted to do 3 rounds of Clomid. I was finally able to start the Clomid in May and it was awful- turned me into a crazy woman. It didn't work. D and I had decided that if it didn't work, we would just move to adoption.

I wasn't sure if I ever had complete peace about doing Clomid, but felt like I needed to try. As I left the doctor's office, I felt such peace and release to move forward. The summer months were spent praying about D's full time ministry and where God would have us next. It was a pretty fast interview/hiring process that led us to moving to a small town in Northwest Louisiana, but we saw (and still see!) God's hands in every step of the way. My house sold fairly quickly and we're in the process of buying the house we're renting now (which I love!!).

We know which agency we're going to use, making plans for home study (since I obviously can't do my own!) and getting finances, fundraising ideas, in place to move forward with a domestic adoption. We're so excited. Adoption is not Plan B for us- just didn't know it would happen for us first. We have no idea how long this journey will be- I've learned in my job to throw timelines out the window. So we'll just pray and see.